Boulder County residents and people all across Colorado's Front Range were served a dramatic reminder just nine months ago what a critical role water can play in our daily lives.

Saturday, members of the public will have an opportunity to learn a whole lot more about the key issues affecting the ever-changing nature of Colorado water's present and future, from a dozen experts deeply schooled in the subject.

Billed as "Water Rights & Nature: Exploring Water Use, Local Water Threats and Ecosystem Conservation," the program will run all day at Unity of Boulder, and is free and open to the public.

As those participating in the forum will show, in a wide range of presentations, flooding is just one facet of the complex environmental dynamics in water influences our lives — regional drought, shortages, agriculture and the economy being among other prominent examples.

Saturday's event is being presented by Boulder Rights of Nature, a group of citizen activists described on their website as "united in our belief in the importance of rights for nature." Recently, they have been working to convince the Boulder County Planning Commission to insert a "rights of nature" plank into the Boulder County Comprehensive Plan.

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The commission has tentatively endorsed that concept, if not the specific phrase "rights of nature," but has asked its staff to fine-tune the language, and expects to revisit the issue later this month.

Saturday's forum features a lineup of nine speakers, several affiliated with Audubon Rockies, plus a former environmental engineer for the Environmental Protection Administration, and an award-winning author on the topic of dams' influence in shaping the west.

'We are a part of, not apart from, nature'

Boulder's Kristen Marshall, a founder and current member of Boulder Rights of Nature, is one of the organizers of Saturday's forum.

"I think that water is something that we all need and use and it's true for nature also," Marshall said.

She called the forum "a recognition that we are part of, not apart from, nature. And actions we take, and how we use water, affect nature."

Marshall added, "For example, the Colorado River no longer reaches its own delta, and yet we are considering pulling more headwater from the Colorado to expand Gross Reservoir. So I think this gives us an opportunity to consider, or reconsider, our actions."

The event on Saturday unfolds against the backdrop of the state of Colorado, in response to an executive order signed by Gov. John Hickenlooper, working to develop the Colorado Water Plan.

That is an effort to leverage nine years of work by the Colorado Basin roundtables, the Interbasin Compact Committee and the Colorado Water Conservation Board to establish water supply and planning solutions that meet the broad array of competing interests in the state.

A draft of the Colorado Water Plan is due on Hickenlooper's desk by December, and it is to be finalized by December 2015.

Gross Reservoir expansion on agenda

The fate of a proposed 72,000-acre-foot expansion of Gross Reservoir, for which a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers environmental impact study ran into the thousands of pages, also will be discussed.

A presenter on the Gross Reservoir controversy will be Chris Garre, a Coal Creek Canyon resident and president of a nonprofit group opposing the project, The Environmental Group of Colorado.

Garre will use his appearance to encourage eleventh-hour public comments to the Army Corps on the project ahead of the Monday deadline for submitting them.

Garre confessed that he doesn't have a lot of faith he can adequately address everything important to say about his topic in the time allotted him at Saturday's forum.

"Really, it requires years of education to untangle all of the intricacies of what's going on here, but I don't think that's an excuse," said Garre. "I think that's a problem with the system.

"In order for the citizens of Colorado to democratically manage our water systems, we're going to need to simplify things. Right now it's extremely convoluted. It's virtually hopeless, unless you're willing to go to school or you're willing to make it your job, which is a serious problem."

However, Garre promised to address the Gross Reservoir proposal by expounding on "a few of the basics that even a 5-year-old can understand."

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